Numismatics is the study or collection of currency, including coins, tokens, paper money, and related objects. While numismatists are often characterized as students or collectors of coins, the discipline also includes the broader study of money and other payment media used to resolve debts and the...

, the term milled coinage (also known as machine-struck coinage) is used to describe coins which are produced by some form of machine, rather than by manually hammering coin blanks between two dies (hammered coinage

Hammered coinage

Hammered coinage is the most common form of coins produced since the invention of coins in the first millennium BC until the early modern period of ca...

) or casting coins from dies.

History

The earliest machine known for producing coins is the screw press, invented by Leonardo da Vinci

in the 15th century, powered by a water mill. With the arrival of machine-driven and struck coins also came new technology and techniques for stamping the coin's edge with a reeded or milled edge or impressed with designs. The presence of reeding shows that the coin's edge has not been shaved or clipped.

Coin debasement is the act of decreasing the amount of precious metal in a coin, while continuing to circulate it at face value. This was frequently done by governments in order to inflate the amount of currency in circulation; typically, some of the precious metal was replaced by a cheaper metal...

into smaller pieces as did happen when coins were hammer-struck. Hence, milled edges were originally designed and intended to show that none of the metal had been shaved off the coin. Earlier, coins were shaved or clipped to almost half of their minted weight by unscrupulous persons and it is from this phenomenon that we derive the phrase "clip artist" to mean a thief. This form of debasement in Tudor England led to the formulation of Gresham's Law

Gresham's Law

Gresham's law is an economic principle that states: "When a government compulsorily overvalues one type of money and undervalues another, the undervalued money will leave the country or disappear from circulation into hoards, while the overvalued money will flood into circulation." It is commonly...

Graining is the practice of imitating woodgrain on a non-wood surface in order to increase that surface's aesthetic appeal. Graining was common in the 19th century, as people were keen on imitating hard, expensive woods by applying a superficial layer of paint onto soft, inexpensive woods. Graining...